Home Forums Data Warehousing Analysis Services Can anyone let me know why not so many companies choose SSAS for data analysis and base layer for dashboard? RE: Can anyone let me know why not so many companies choose SSAS for data analysis and base layer for dashboard?

  • sqlvogel (8/7/2012)


    david.hao (8/7/2012)


    I agree with the power brought by SSAS but just wondering the low marketshare by SSAS.

    Low market share? That's a difficult thing to quantify in a useful way. Gartner puts Microsoft 5th in its league table of BI vendors, with a 8.7% share. That's based on revenue however. Some of the other vendors in the table have prices that are significantly higher than Microsoft's BI offering and so the 8.7% probably underestimates Microsoft's presence if you want to measure unit sales or number of installations.

    Stats based on job postings are hard to interpret as an indication of market share. The term "data warehousing" is often used very broadly to cover a range of business analysis, data integration, database development and reporting functions associated with BI. On a large data warehouse / BI project team even if SSAS is being used there may only be a small number of job roles that actually require SSAS or MDX skills.

    I agree. trying to explain the market by way of job postings is going to yield very low reliability. Too many job postings are written by HR, who would generally not know SSAS from SAP.

    The job I'm in now, we are a tiny dept (I am the only tech, 2 other + boss are business side). For me, DW/BI are one and the same job but in larger companies, an ETL developer would not need to know SSAS skills and vice versa. Lucky me, I get to do both roles.

    I think that the bottom line is that every company has its own needs and those needs will vary widely. In a larger company, I would have a smaller width of responsibilities while at this small shop, I get to take it from start to finish.

    Gartner is reliable in gathering info while job postings are really a crap shoot in doing anything other than guaging what is happening in your neck of the woods.